After you flush
Taking sewage away
Taking it, treating it – returning it to nature
We collect around 1,271 million litres of wastewater from three million households and 200,000 businesses, every day in the North West.
When you flush it, pour it, pull the plug and drain it away, your wastewater goes on a journey back to nature – read more about what to flush and what not to flush.
Collecting and treating sewage
Wastewater collected from homes and businesses is transported along our 72,000 kilometres of pipes and sewers to one of our 560 wastewater treatment works, all dedicated to cleaning up in-coming wastewater so that the treated water can then return to rivers and to the sea. Read more about our wastewater services
Sewer flooding
Sewer flooding is unpleasant and distressing and we spend money every year to help prevent it from happening.
There are many different reasons why a flood can occur and the impact it has on our customers can vary, with the numbers of flooding incidents that occur each year being heavily influenced by the weather.
For these reasons we have developed a sewer flooding index which assesses the impact of sewer flooding on our customers. The index looks at both the cause of the flooding and the impact of the flooding, on properties, outside spaces or repeat flooding.
The number of flooding incidents that occur in our region has steadily reduced over the last few years and we have met our target for the year. This improvement has been as a result of continual improvements to our network operating model, along with sewer misuse customer education initiatives and partnership projects.
Over the next five years we're aiming to reduce levels of flooding, improve our index score and continue to help to reduce the impact of sewer flooding on customers.
Read more about flooding, what to do if you're affected and who to turn to for help.